恍惚的人

by Sawako Ariyoshi, 有吉佐和子, 李炜 (Translator)

八十多岁的茂造患了阿尔茨海默症，一夕间成了恍惚的人。儿子信利和孙子敏一个说老人“像残叶贴在枯树枝头不肯落下”，一个说“爸爸妈妈你们可不要活这么大年纪”，但儿媳昭子却发现老人依然会被路边的花朵吸引。

昭子决定负起照顾公公的责任，尽一切努力让老人活下去。从此她一边上班，一边看护公公。孙子也用零花钱给爷爷买拨浪鼓。听到拨浪鼓的声音，老人终于露出了灿烂的笑容。

当生活的重担压得一家人快要缓不过气的时候，老人忽然去世了。敏说：“妈妈，如果能让爷爷再多活些日子就好了。”昭子热泪盈眶……

264 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1972

About the author

Born in Wakayama City and a graduate of Tokyo Women's Christian College, Sawako Ariyoshi spent part of her childhood in Java. A prolific novelist, she dramatises significant issues in her fiction such as the suffering of the elderly, the effects of pollution on the environment, and the effects of social and political change on Japanese domestic life and values, especially on the lives of women. Her novel The Twilight Years depicts the life of a working woman who is caring for her elderly, dying father-in-law. Among Ariyoshi's other novels is The River Ki, an insightful portrait of the lives of three rural women: a mother, daughter, and granddaughter. Her novel The Doctor's Wife, a historical novel dramatising the roles of nineteenth-century Japanese women as it chronicles the experience of a pioneer doctor with breast cancer surgery, has identified her as one of the finest postwar Japanese women writers. The Doctor's Wife (1966) is considered as her best novel. Starting in 1949, Ariyoshi studied literature and theatre at the Tokyo Women's Christian College until she graduated in 1952. In 1959 she spent a year at the Sarah Lawrence College in New York. She then worked with a publishing company and also wrote for journals, joined a dance troupe, and wrote short stories and scripts for various media. She travelled extensively, getting material for her serialized novels of domestic life, mostly dealing with social issues. Recipient of a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship in 1959, Ariyoshi had received some Japanese literary awards and was at the height of her career when she died quietly in her sleep.

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